TEACHING MINERALOGY IN CONTEXT: FROM THE CORE TO THE CRUST

On the Cutting Edge (OCE) workshops and their precursor brought a new awareness of how to actively teach geoscience courses using modern pedagogical methods, thus essentially rescuing core geology courses from century old doldrums. A prime example is the impact OCE workshops have had on teaching Mineralogy. Minerals comprise planet earth and teaching Mineralogy is fundamental to understanding geological systems. It remains an essential core course. Traditionally Mineralogy was taught through lectures beginning with crystallographic concepts and continuing to systematic mineralogy where, one by one, minerals were described according to their chemistry. Despite the beauty, importance and utility of minerals, Mineralogy courses were considered boring. In 1996, J. Brady, D. Mogk, and D. Perkins challenged the community to do better. Their 1996 Teaching Mineralogy workshop became the model for subsequent OCE workshops and served as the nucleus of many resources. Placing professors in the role of students, new ideas for laboratory activities and teaching techniques came to life. This community effort inspired numerous redesigns for presentation of mineralogical materials, one of which was to place minerals in context, from core to the crust, while intertwining conceptual aspects. Techniques emerged from OCE with a new focus on active learning, course-embedded research and methods to improve student’s spatial and penetrative thinking skills early in the geoscience sequence. Teaching Mineralogy continues to evolve as an avenue for teaching about complex systems, spatial and penetrative thinking, visualization, sustainability, data gathering and quantitative skills. These mineralogical foundations can expand on awareness of earth materials in later courses that deal with minerals and the environment, societal relevance, critical thinking, public policy and communication.

No other program has been or continues to be more important to development of classroom materials and teaching techniques in the geosciences. The visionaries leading this program brought geoscience education, and student-centered learning into a new realm and made novel teaching materials and techniques accessible to all scientists. Continued development of materials by a transformed community ensures the program’s lasting legacy.